LOS ANGELES -- John Sohus wore white socks, a tan shirt and nondescript blue jeans that had been carefully belted to his waist on the day he was killed, cut up and buried in the backyard of a San Marino house, a coroner's investigator said Tuesday during the murder trial of a German national who posed as Clark Rockefeller.

Rockefeller, 52, whose real name is Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, is suspected of killing Sohus in February 1985.

Sohus' trisected remains were dug up in 1994 by a swimming-pool contractor and examined in three parts by the investigator.

Most of Sohus' head had been placed in what was once a yellow-and-red plastic bag bearing the logo of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

"Inside were skull fragments, a jaw, jaw fragments, a clump of hair and vegetation from the site," coroner's investigator Manuel Munoz told the seven-woman, five-man jury.

The bag was secured with what appeared to be a piece of telephone cable. Gerhartsreiter attended the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee before coming to California and assuming the identity of Christopher Chichester, XIII baronet.

Sohus' skull and jaw, shattered into about 40 pieces, were placed on a gurney beside two other gurneys in an examination room. Those contained the dead man's torso and his legs and feet, Munoz said. Each section of the body, still clothed, had been wrapped in plastic. The legs were placed in what was described as a fiberglass drum. The dead man's hands were wrapped in what appeared to be plastic grocery bags.

Gerhartsreiter has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he faces 26 years to life in prison.

Gerhartsreiter was arrested in 2008 after kidnapping his daughter in Boston. (He was subsequently convicted.) The Boston detective who arrested him also testified Tuesday. He described locating some of Gerhartsreiter's possessions at a home in Wellesley, Mass. in October.

Among them were Gerhartsreiter's German passport, his green card and his social security card.

"There were some personal papers in the name of Clark Rockefeller, a pair of dark black Raybans and a pair of rose-colored, round glasses," Detective Joe Leeman said. There were also "some shoes, and a piece of art, a wallet and some credit cards. "

Earlier in the day, a contractor, a former police officer and a student who played Trivial Pursuit with Gerhartsreiter just yards away from where Sohus' body had been buried, took separate turns on the witness stand.

Former San Marino police Officer Joe Lucero said in 1994 officers spoke to witnesses who recalled the man they knew as Chris Chichester digging in the backyard of a house at 1920 Lorain Road, where Chichester rented a guest house.

"Not burying a body," he clarified. "But, there was a report of somebody digging in the backyard. "

That information was never put into a police report, Lucero acknowledged.

The student, South Pasadena resident Dana Farrar - now a special education teacher - said she knew Gerhartsreiter as Chichester and met him at USC, where she was studying film. She said her father warned her about Chichester.

"He said Chris was as full of (excrement) as a Christmas goose," Farrar testified.

Farrar said she and five others attended a party hosted by Chichester at the Sohus home in late spring of 1985.

During the party she said she asked the host why a portion of the yard had been dug up.

"It looked like someone had dug up part of the lawn, like someone had just been digging there," Farrar recalled. "I said, 'What's going on with your yard Chris, it's all dug up?' He said he had been having plumbing problems. "

The day's first witness was a swimming-pool contractor who recalled digging up a human skull in 1994.

Jose Perez Jr., with his father, dug nearly 1,000 pools in the San Gabriel Valley.

About three feet into their pool dig, Perez, driving a Bobcat, recalled striking something that at first appeared to be buried trash and a fiberglass box.

"We thought it was bags of garbage," recalled Perez, now a cement truck driver. "After my father dragged that bag off to the side, he pulled out one of the bags and started digging through it. He grabbed a piece of rebar and pulled out a skull. At that point we were all freaked out. He sat the skull down and called the cops. "

Under cross-examination Perez said a jaw bone at the scene became detached from the skull when his father pulled it out of the bag.

Gerhartsreiter lived on the Lorain Road property owned by Sohus' mother, Ruth "Didi" Sohus. John and his wife Linda lived in the main house with her. Linda Sohus disappeared about the same time John did, and his mother sold the house in 1986.

Prosecutor Habib Balian claims Gerhartsreiter was on the lam since at least 1988 and changed his identity to Clark Rockefeller to avoid detection.

As a Rockefeller, he lived the high life as a member of Boston society.

Gerhartsreiter is being held in Men's Central Jail.

Throughout Tuesday's testimony, Rockefeller, dressed in a blue blazer and gray slacks, took notes with a pencil and monitored evidence, including photos of Sohus' smashed skull.

Reporters from around the world have covered the case, which is the subject of a television docudrama, two works of non-fiction and a piece of fiction.